Inside a Chinese Ghost Town of Abandoned Mansions | WSJ 

my first thought when they walked into the first building

It would be dangerous to even risk shooting a film on an unfinished building.

Money owned by foreign investors😂🤑 if that chinese money 3:23 they wont do that🤑🤑 international bond🤑 wall street😵‍💫

Evergrande was incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory,

No insurance company would ever cover you

Most likely bought for investment purposes.

Not really when you consider the huge identical townhouses in London or Paris. It is a bit weird though when you consider these are not prime real estate locations, although there was once a time when Kensington was a new development just outside London.

​@@darthvadeth6290tankies be like:

Those mansions are for the higher middle class and not for the rich.

@@matthewmiller6568 ad hominem 😂

It's cute that you believe the CCP allows those people to stop payments on their mortgages.

Their people have added 5 trillion to their savings these last 2 years

yikes

@@DW-op7ly no they dont. 🤣

Even though China has invested trillions in their belt and road partner countries China exports are up 7.1% In 2024 And it still has a 820 billion plus dollar a year trade surplus with the world the last 2 years Even though their Central Government is cracking down in real estate speculation Slowing down the economy? The Chinese people have added 2.6 trillion to their savings in 2022 And 1.8 trillion to their savings for first 10 months of 2023 👇 Chinese Consumers Are Saving Rather Than Spending Amid Economic Downturn Dec 21, 2023 - Chinese households have added 13.8 trillion yuan ($1.89 trillion) The middle class is also prioritizing savings and seeking safe investment opportunities, according to the report. Chinese households have added 13.8 trillion yuan ($1.89 trillion) in savings in the first 10 months of the year, an 8.5% increase from the previous year. Pymnts

This should be used for vertical farming. Mud-Grab and herbs (in warm part of China), Not sure what can be done in the cold part of china.

Very convenient for borrowing a cup of sugar, or in this case perhaps a cup of rice LOL 007

@@sergeant64 that seems like a good idea.

*knocks on neighbors upstairs window from your 4th floor balcony* Excuse me but would you have any Grey Poupon?

Much better to live in a rusting trailer on 50 acres of land in Arkansas.

Life is unfair

WHAT IS FAIR????? I would like to know.

yes

Actually it is good lesson for the Chinese although expensive. They will learn from this.

Better than millions of homeless as a result of the super efficiency

共产党给个你免费上大学，房子，但是你还仇恨它😂

That's called capitalism

It probably has to do with the size of the population. Your romanian population will be just like a one city in China. education is free in China up to grade 12.

It's been a tradition to pre-order houses in China, anyway it doesn't work now

Never order games and never order houses, just grab em😂

Not to mention they would also need to pay for where they are currently staying. A double payment must be really tough.

That is INSANE!

What is the difference between social credit in China and credit score here in the US?

@@samanthajones4877 Even if you have a poor credit score in the US you can travel to other countries, but train tickets, and not be checked on by your local government. If you have a poor social credit score in China they often bar your children from going to good schools, they limit your travel, and they take a keen interest in monitoring your messages and web searches.

@@samanthajones4877 Social Credit is controlled by the Government that could virtually block you to do anything but work to repair your debit

CCP does

Communist millionaires.

One with SOCIALIST values, LOL

Greater fool strategy.

Probably newly rich who care more for prestige and status than taste or the lower upper class who are still gonna be cost-conscious for their mansions.

In China it's standard practice and since the government doesn't let journalists publish too much on the housing market crisis and even punishes people who protest after losing their money it's hard for things to change

You forget there is fraud because of no sewage hook up. Where in Mexico have you bought your house?

@@merchantfanThat shows stupidity and greed go hand in hand.

@@estebancorral5151 Well consumers only have so much power compared to the government especially in a "communist" country (though really the communism just seems to be a justification for totalitarianism)

This is very common in the US and the rest of the world for new construction. Developers buy land and 'sell' the houses to people who get to then select custom details they want. There are periodic inspections by both the mortgage company and the local government to check on the items you mention like plumbing and electrical being up to code. I'm not saying it's an ideal practice, but it is by no means unusual.

They are made from literal cardboard they will fall apart within a year

@@theflanman420420 All of them are still using kitec plumbing so the whole plumbing system would fall apart within a couple of years if the plumbing was ever used.

@@theflanman420420 well it looks like concrete, but in some of the shots, you can see it is low quality and cracking

agree, it really is just plain weird to see a huge set of properties left at 90% completion. What a waste.

Even though there are between 20 and 45 million unoccupied homes across China, which account for roughly 600 million square meters of uninhabited floor space - enough to completely cover Madrid, these places are not the urban wastelands they are often posited to be. While many of China’s new cities and urban districts are deficient in people they are not deficient in owners. Nearly every apartment that goes on the market in China is quickly purchased, often at exorbitant prices that commonly range in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Far from being unwanted infrastructure that could seamlessly be doled out to refugees, those arrays of vacant high-rises are actually the proud possessions of people who paid a lot of money for them. So why would anyone spend incredible amounts of cash on houses they do not intent to use? * A huge portion of the homes that are purchased in China function very much like stocks or a trade-able commodity. As an incredible amount of new apartments are sold as unfinished concrete cavities without any interior fit out or even windows, they are in no way immediately livable. Although they are very actively bought and sold in this bare-bones form, which is often preferred by investors. In many ways they are purely economic entities, quantifiable placeholders of value that are traded on the open market akin to precious metals. Just as one doesn’t need to mold a piece of gold into something usable like a piece of jewelry for it to have value and an economic function, an apartment in China doesn’t need to have people living in it for it to be economically viable. “Empty units leave flexibility for quick sales in a changing market or need to cash in quickly,” said Barry Wilson, the founding director of Barry Wilson Project Initiatives, a Hong Kong based urban design firm. Another reason for the sheer amount of unused apartments in China is the fact that there is often little financial incentive for owners to do anything with them after purchase. There is no yearly property tax in China, so vacant properties are not a financial drain on their owners. While the potential returns that could be had from renting them out (1% or so) is often not worth the hassle - especially because it costs tens of thousands of dollars to construct the interiors of new apartments in preparation for tenants. This is combined with the fact that Chinese homeowners, especially investors who have multiple properties, are remarkably un-leveraged. According to Mark Tanner, over 80% of homes in China are owned outright. This means that most homeowners, especially the big investors with multiple properties, generally don’t have any mortgages to pay off or any other leans, so there isn’t as much financial pressure to make a profit from these homes in the short term. Thevagabondjourney

This land was better before humans discovered it, the whole earth was really.

No it isn't

@@chrisleaf you mean beore WHITE people discovered it? because land was THRIVING in the continent of America and africa before colonization so idk what you're talking about.

По своей стране другие несудят😂

The forest destroyed for this abandoned houses

Just a moneymaking venture, they didn’t intend people to live there!

Socialism!

Same as Beverly Hills stop it

That's communist luxury for you.

Other than the French style which I don’t think would be popular, it looks like a typical “upscale” modern housing community in pretty much any modern country where a lot of people would love to be able to live (in a finished state of course)

Agreed but do you really expect Chinese politicians and developers to give an their honest comments/opinions on these projects? 😂

I feel like they would get a script from the CCP , one that they have to adhere to firmly or they wouldn't be allowed to give the interview and if they aren't allowed to give the interview and they still give the interview they would be persecuted, enslaved, raped, etc... they and their families... although , I dunno, never been in China ...

不可能的，接受外媒訪問講中國缺點是不被允許的，他們有言論審查，只能講「中國好的故事」

​@@patrickkruidenberg2581 atleast Chinese build . In USA our building are made of cardboard

Then you will never see the reporter again.

During the peak, there were more demands than supplies. In Chinese society, men are not able to find a willing wife unless he has invested in buying a home. No house, no marriage 😅

The Chinese would think the same on the US reverse repo..

Zero protection for customers....

this is pretty standard outside of us/ in the developing world

I think it's kinda pre-sell offerings which gives you discounts.

not so impressive next to 50 other identical mansions near you though.

I'd be careful. Half the INHABITED buildings in China were built with duct tape, tooth picks and super glue. I'd be downright petrified how bad one of the ABANDONED variety were constructed.

Concrete use for housing is not uncommon in Asia though.

@@mjjjuly I mean, for most of the world, concrete is an extremely common building material. It's just in the US and Canada that they prefer using lumber and only use concrete for skyscrapers

Electrical grid could be underground and in concrete houses (that are the most popular in the world) the plumbing and wires are all inside the walls and floor. You can only see the wires in the holes meant for lamps or switches. Dont know how it is in wooden houses.

Uh wut? Concrete construction is the norm all over Asia and even parts of Europe.

Beijing bosses did expect all the units to be snatched up. They're plans have gone horribly wrong.

In the old days they had eunuchs to do all the chores cheaply. There is a huge amount of maintenance for these places, and even with the minimum wage, costs are too much.

The newly rich.

Me

We have them here in rural PA. Not everyone are city folks. You couldn't pay me to live in a city. What about all the Southern plantation mansions?

@@___beyondhorizon4664 Which is essentially ALL of chinese rich - there were none prior to Deng.

​@@backtoasimplelife Exactly, I live in the south and all the super nice mansions and renovated plantation homes are out in the boonies on large properties. The relatively smaller mansions that are in the city are typically the ones left over from when the cities were just small towns, so the richer people had no problem building there. They typically have a bunch of regular sized family homes surrounding them that are the new additions from urban sprawl.

China doesn't have NIMBY karens

​@@larrys4618honestly one of pros of communism or communist leader

Cause in China Goverment builds houses. In US private business build and zoning laws are controlled by home owners in the neighborhood/small municipalties - which restrict housing supply.

@@lilacghoste8366 yea chinese is hyper capalist. not remotely communist.

@@larrys4618 they also dont have many rights at all in the eyes of the government, which is why they built trains going through apartment buildings, and why most of building liveleak videos are of Chinese origin lol.

Yup anywhere from 1.5 to 3 billion abandoned flats. BILLION

They don't even have enough to buy food man

the food is cheap ,all of them can buy it,If you come to China you will know it.

I'd love that to be true, but how would one verify such a claim? I recently saw a video that used satellite data of things like light pollution to assert that Chinese GDP by now has become overstated by an accumulated 100%-150%. Not sure what to make of that, as they didn't add any supporting metrics.

​@@dewaard3301According to Gordon Chang, Peter Zeihan and George Friedman , China Economy has collapsed every year for decades.

nice

America has its own set of problems but this kind of waste does not exist in the US.

The US has city and state regulation codes for approving the location if a house. This would NEVER even be a thought of a builder.

The presenter did mention it was built decade ago

In the program it was also said that there are 20 million pre bought incomplete houses like this in China. Were all of those built in one region of China under one particular person?

Certainly, but my point is really about regional imbalance that exacerbates structural weaknesses in the economy (often due to regulatory oversight), not housing bubble per se. @@ysp1784

How bad is the economy from your point of view?

@@ophila7Very hard to say, overall. Looks resilient in some ways and tragic in others. However, my point is really about the mal-investment in the housing market. It was like this half a decade ago, all over China. Most new houses, or at least a very large percentage of them are empty. I drove all over the country and saw it everywhere, from big cities to the countryside.

I totally agree with you. I came to the conclusion that they had no idea what they were doing 🤷🏽‍♂or possessed by somet demonic AI 😱

Basically many in the west are complaining because the Communist Chinese are cracking down on property speculation in China…. Yet cheering on our own crackdown on speculators here with interest rate hikes, empty home taxes, speculation taxes, and foreign buyer taxes which many seem to be Chinese investors who buy those monster homes and leave them empty Without this crackdown The other option is 70% of the Chinese in their real estate markets buying their 4th or 5th home right about now with a few hundred million rural migrants, migrating to the city without affordable homes In China in 2008 around 70% of the people in their real estate markets were buying their 1st homes in their cities By 2018 around 70% of the people in their real estate markets were buying their 2nd and 3rd homes in their cities That’s why you are hearing about problems with their property developers these days. Because back in 2010? Their Central Government started cutting of money flow to these developers. Thus why you heard about Shadow Banks and Underground Economy back then, that their Government had to come into to shutdown or regulate. Even then, It took them almost 14 years to get their overheated real estate under control Heck they were about to introduce a nation wide property tax, but then trump started the trade war in 2018 Why is their Central Government doing this? Because there are still a few hundred million poorer rural folk they still expect to move to the cities to join their more well off urban city folk countrymen. Problem is these property developers were building higher end homes, and not building the affordable homes these rural migrants will need In China Owning a home in the city you migrate to? Affects your employment, health, education and even marriage prospects don’t have a house you don’t get married Thus the common prosperity push and the crackdown on the overt displays of wealth in China Their Government probably figured out you disenfranchise the people at the bottom of your society they are the ones most likely to act out in protest

What do you expect in 5 min

Why risky? (I dont know anything about construction)

@@scylk Dude saw a couple of clips of houses made with faulty materials in China and assumes every single Chinese home falls apart when you enter them...

@@lennart266 Well to be fair, it's not just china. Any abandoned home you're at a potential risk for it or something collapsing on you, that's the case everywhere - but especially when you're talking about abandoned mass produced homes... I wouldn't personally take the risk.

They aren't coming, but they are certainly "breathing hard"

nope, they pay or loan first then they build.

Especially when you build for a budget peaple can´t afford. several project was build for buyers that had no intrest in buying said units (upper mid would not buy a regular sized apartment for normal price out in noware where there wasn´t even jobs for them at the time). and peaple that was willing to move there to start the local market couldn´t afford it.

They already took out the mortgage on the house. The developers aren't finishing. People are basically paying on a mortgage on an unfinished house that they can't live in.

Too bad we could not move them to the US as so many here need housing.

Communism and islam are both utterly failed ideologies. Only brute force keeps their leaders in power.

Do you like gutter oil?

要怎麼了解中國經濟以及政府的措施和效果？有好的管道嗎？

@@user_thelongwayaround gutter oil 😂

You can not afford to buy does not mean that no one can afford to buy, at the same time, the real estate economy in any country has a similar situation, is there no cheap house for you to choose? You are just looking for an excuse for vanity, and your ID does not seem to come from a Chinese Internet account!

Chris Watts mansion was inferior to those shown here

lol why tf are you bringing up Chris Watts? @@janpierzchala2004

young people in the US can't even change a light bulb... imagine them owning a home, just a tragedy waiting to happen

Maybe some young people should do a better job saving money. Spending $6 coffee, Fiji water, $200 shoes, $1000+ phones, and expensive cars? You wonder why they can't save for a house?😂

At least the houses in the US are not tofu.

没有浪费，这里是中国，有8亿刚刚摆脱贫困的人口，因为贪婪，导致价格扭曲，房子没有配置给需要的人，只要需求存在，还有机会纠正供应问题，游戏还在进行中。

Don’t be. It’s a tough lesson learn for China.

they look like cheap materials, also bad taste/design

​@cccc-mj9wx This has been an issue for years. And yet it's still a ghost town. Where is the benefit for the people who live there?

You are unusually poetic.

I hadn't heard of 'depopulation' before reading your post. It sounds interesting. The Earth's carrying capacity for humans, is about 1/20th the number that exists now.

This is fake news. Carrying capacity is like 5x what it is now.@@brahmburgers

@@jwonz2054 Yea, it's pretty obvious the number would be over 8 billion since it's carrying that many right now, heh

@@Djamonja in order to sustain 8 billion, humans are using natural resources (underground water aquifers, nutrient rich soil/fertilizers) at a rate way higher than they can be replenished by naturally occuring biogeochemical systems. when those eventually run out the carrying capacity will be much lower (unless you wanna start genetically modifying everything/changing the weather). idk what the actual number is but the fact its carrying that many right now isn't indicative of much

@@user-jq6ro5rt6s "Using ressources" that is pretty vague and also wrong. There is nothing special about underground water for example, only that it is easier to get then by desalinating sea water. Fertilizers is the same story. Most of them are artificially created (the times of Guano are over) and Fritz Haber even got an Nobel prize for inventing it. Infact: Huge amounts of the earth surface is unused. So no, you are wrong. Earth can sustain a lot more people than 8 billion.

The journalist is probably banned from China now.

seriously tho, im astounded the PRC has been willing to let videos like these keep being made

I sincerely doubt they knew he was filming. He never would have been allowed if they'd known. @@chakky533

When Xi sees this video, heads are gonna roll. China always tries to hide its flaws from the rest of the world.

Why? It's a private building company. In my country and yours and China, companies like this use deposits from new contracts as working capital and cash flow to complete the current unfinished houses. It all works well until....what you see on the vid.

Yep - China - in 2003-2007 was taking 4 of every 5 taker shipments of concrete the US produced, we actually had a shortage in AZ when we were trying to build our own subdivisions during this time - all the concrete was heading to china (Portland Cement)

Yet you Americans cried about trade deficits 😂

Source ? Proof ?

@@JonySmith-bb4gx Do you mean for the environmental impact of Concrete? And the pointless use of concrete for houses that will never be used? The later, you can see with your own eyes in this video, and there are many others like it on youtube - from different areas. Regarding the former, you can click this link to learn more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concrete#References

​@@agates9383years before the Chinese bought up all the steel. Europe was sloshing in money but now all frittered away and no heavy manufacturing jobs now

The business model is sound. These are hit and run operations (fraud). The people in charge have collected the funds and are long gone from China. Probably bought a real mansion here in the USA.

the average chinese is dizzy with ambitions of getting rich while the ccp is dizzy with beating the US economy.

Compare it with a Ponzi scheme. developers - Once you stop you'll be found out. The government wants to keep it going because it boost their GDP.

Since people were getting mortgages to buy the homes before they were finished, I guess it operated like a Ponzi scheme, and the building work was just something to show to help them sell. So, it was working, as long as the money kept coming in.

Its quite easy to scam in China, and pretty much anywhere in the world I guess

It's really amazing to see how deep of an echo chamber Americans are living in while constantly shouting about free speech and free media. What's the point of a "free" society if you can believe, for years and decades, a myth that can be so easily proven false? 😂

Did u not watch the video?​@darthvadeth6290 something you see right in front of your eyes is a myth? Go get yourself a dictionary.

Working hard to get your paycheck today. What's the rate you get? Is it per word or per comment?

@ismaelatta3470 He means Winnie the Pooh was never banned in China. Some online references to Pooh may have been scrubbed by sensors for a time back when Obama was president, but you've always been able to buy Winnie the Pooh products. Yet another misconception of the West...

Even the cartoon (Winnie the Pooh ) is banned in China, Xi is another level when it comes to dictators, he is even scared of cartoon characters.

Sounds like an interesting place for a weekend, where can I find it? I also live in Shenzhen.

Correcting itself is a funny way of saying "billions of dollars, millions of worker positions and a incommensurable amount of trust in the economy going up in flames" Speculation or not, thats still money gone gone, and jobs gone gone, no business or investment exists isolated

Actually it's not homeownership souch as it is leasing the homes. China doesn't allow for perpetuity in this matter

Dude, you are missing a huge point! These two companies borrowed a lot of money and no way to pay it back. You forget too that people leverage a 2nd and 3rd home, now what are there options, none, they are broke with no home. People who did the work don't get paid, these buildings will need to be brought down at some point, more money spent.

It's almost funny, you trying to paint a silver lining on this massive problem.

What is it about speculation in real estate that you don't understand? It is debt -- it is not cash -- and speculation is always just that -- speculation ! Debt is debt whether it was 2008 or 2024 -- it may have a different face but it is still debt!

Me too

Same way we westerners pay taxes to "rent" our land. Stop paying and you can guess what happens. You can claim we own land but all of the rules and laws of the government supersede your ownership.

I was going to argue the same thing Add into the fact only property owners in the bigger tier 1 cities in China are charged property taxes And that was to cool down their markets Probably should have made it nation wide a decade ago

@@DaysGabe "Same way we westerners pay taxes to "rent" our land." Not really. You at least have a right to vote for politicians who will reduce property taxes.

@@Salmagundiii My only goal with my response you quoted was to bridge a gap in understanding. You make a good point in theory, but everyone knows that in practice, western politicians routinely lie and accept big money (i.e. corruption) to get elected. I enjoy and will fight for my rights as a westerner, but western style liberal democracy is not the only way forward. (In fact, we became this free AFTER securing our living standards by colonizing the rest of the world). I'm hopeful because China demonstrates new pathways forward for the rest of the post colonial world that we westerners love to critique and look down on, and this WSJ video is a perfect example of that.

Property tax is practically zero in China.

The lime also generates a tonne of CO2 to produce as well. At least concrete can be recycled.

nah, probably all made from tofu-dreg.

I very much doubt concrete sand was used in the construction 😅

If you are a limited company and protected by company law, it doesn't matter how much you waste when it's not your money. Let the creditors worry, that's the policy of crooked company owners.

@@anthonybernstein9698no one cares

在他们眼里中国天天在崩溃😂可是美国零元购却天天在发生😂

the US has ~600K homeless, not millions

US also has millions of empty houses. Some people own 10-20 houses whie others are homeless.

Think we could ship them to China?

@@MadDogPeople And now, empty business buildings.

The government is focusing on the "Three Major Projects" instead of bailing out the indebted, speculative private developers.

.........they should consider a BAN on any new-building in areas where there are ALREADY unoccupied/unsold/empty homes.

Yeah in the world they need to take them to china and turkey 😂 ?

Why do

Nightmare to harems as well, men want their concubines and eunuchs to be housed.

What the reason? To get money from investors and disappear?

Turkey has like the second worst currency in the world. Erdogan REFUSES to increase interest rates. Erdogan has family that run a huge construction company. Here's where these two parts of Erdogan clash. What is a good way to secure your money when inflation is going crazy? You invest your money into property. Something SOLID that can hold value. Erdogan has 0 incentive to raise rates because people (wanting to SOLIDIFY their money before it crashes in value) are taking their money out of savings (and getting a loan) and investing it into solid property... property his contruction company will build. So by keeping the cost of lending low the government will just print print print print print print this is why you need a free press that can expose these crooks. and a judiciary independent enough to put them away. @@nnddii

Don't build French style-chateaus unless youre a aristocrat.

You obviously haven't seen the Lower Mainland (Vancouver)

'face' is #1 concern for Chinese.

The chinese forgot that typical mansions in the West come with a ton of land.

@@Vlican Cant own land in china - 70 yr lease, and it would go to hard against the communist manifesto if you had sprawling estates owned by chinese people while the country is still communist ruled - tough to square with their philosophy of socialism

Not allowed to build single family homes in China, so everything is either a townhouse or multi-family.

Rich people don't do lawns

So they can build more houses to sell.

Still better than USA

🙄No!

True land developers all know that. But Hollywood producers don't care, when they just want the shoot done quickly.

Whole thing is so corrupt

One end of the corporate structure issued billions of USD, EUR, JPY, etc., in near-zero interest rate loans to executives. Those execs tuned around and then purchased, via opaque nests of shell companies, high-interest, dividend-paying loans issued by other subsidiaries. The scheme enabled insiders to collect billions of dividends in foreign currencies, hidden from everyone. CCP, organized crime, money launderers were all in on it. A massive con and such levels of fraud cannot be imagined.

haha.. so it is not the chinese that got screwed, the US is.. well, that explains a lot.

Jason not sure if what you say is true. Do you have evidence or is this just a point of view. The reason I ask is that 'corrupt officials' don't last long in any country when the jig is up.

You don’t collect dividends when you issue a bond. You pay dividends to your bondholders. What you said makes no sense.

China creates USA doesn't

This is not even Shenyang, i would not even call it suburbs. Manchuria is basically like rust belt of the US, slightly better. Had been depopulating ever since the 2000s. Northern China run central heating system like the Soviet Union, using hot water from the nearest coal/gas power stations, or shared boilers. It was quite hot and dry inside, most of the time.

They know exactly what they are doing, these project are used to squeeze money out of people.

With a population of 1.4 billion in China, can we live in slums without developing real estate? Real estate is an inevitable result of economic and industrial development. Only by ending real estate can we enter the era of consumption. The end of China's 1.4 billion population in real estate is a good thing for China, but the problem is that China's real estate has not ended at all, it is only controlled by the state.

Communism does that

the CCP has not understood what makes a market economy viable long term? "houses are for living in, not for speculation" - xi jinping

@@LivingLonger And, as showcased, the homes are not being lived in and the developers "speculated" that people will buy it and that they will have enough money to finish it. Yeah, that statement was quite ignorant in that you, Xi, were trying to control the future and it didn't work.

we need the government to crackdown on the drug companies. There is a drug announced today for 5million dollars, and even with insurance, most people have medical debt

Yeah, I wonder, what happens in other countries? Yours, for example?

You're so right! A country with thousands of years of continuous civilization, top 5 highest IQ population in the world, second largest economy in GDP term growing at 5%, already #1 largest in PPP terms, industrial base that makes 30% of world's products, largest middle class and most number of millionaires in the world, completely independent and self-reliant high speed rail industry, defense industry, 5G+ network industry, AI industry, shipbuilding industry, nuclear industry, battery/EV industry, space industry, and on track to building their own semiconductor industry, one of the most protected country from foreign intelligence cough CIA cough infiltration, with a population that has 90% home ownership, making policy decisions based on hundred years plans, has pre-built some houses in regions they plan to develop in the future... Yea, China certainly "doesn't seem to put a lot of thoughts into the things they do" 😊

Don't forget industrialization wasteland of the world, number 1 country overfishing the oceans of the world leaving more fishnets behind than any other country. @@darthvadeth6290

Bro, they went from haha low labor sweat shop to making you cope in 20 short years.

This is pretty common among dictatorships, a bunch of self centered idiots at top make the decisions based on their own interests and the country and the people pay the price.

Yeah just like oceangate submarine😂😂

They look rather well built. Note: they were built over 10 years prior.

@@brahmburgers so 10 years ago they built this ghost city why did the chinese goverment let them build 20 million more homes as stone shells they should have fixed this 10 years ago

@@shawnsmith524 Shawn, there are a lot of 'should haves.' The Chinese economy was growing fast in recent years (it's now slowed to a crawl). Like most people, Chinese value buying property - for their own, and for investment. What we have now is a giant r.e. bubble, and it's starting to burst. It happened in Asia in 1997/'98, and it's happening again.